The reward given by a person’s brain when a Facebook posting of theirs is viewed, liked and commented on has proven to be comparable in pleasure to the response from food and sex, according to a recent Harvard University study.

The research, which was published last month in an edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that social media outlets give way to an increased rate of “self-disclosure.” The increase in “self-disclosure” leads to a spike in the amount of dopamine produced based on the pleasure or anticipation of a reward as a result of a social-media post being viewed, according to the research.

The study, which hints at Facebook’s role in the study but never directly cites the social-media giant, discovered “that humans so willingly self-disclose because doing so represents an event with intrinsic value, in the same way as with primary rewards such as food and sex.”